The Week In Pop: 5 Seconds Of Summer And The Evolution Of Pop-Punk Boy Bands

“She looks so perfect standing there/ In my American Apparel underwear” is the new “I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch.” Fifteen years ago, at the height of boy-band mania, America was bombarded by LFO’s “Summer Girls,” in which bros with magnificently sculpted haircuts and bodacious bods sing-rapped clumsy couplets between harmonious refrains about the reigning prep attire of the day. These days it’s marvelously coifed Aussie mall punks 5 Seconds Of Summer serving up choruses about lovely ladies wearing name-brand garments — or, in the case of breakthrough single “She Looks So Perfect,” undergarments. 5 Seconds Of Summer presents as a rock band, but they register as a boy band. They are teen idols no different from the NKOTBs and 98 Degrees of yesteryear but for a Stratocaster in hand and their logo emblazoned on a kick drum.

This isn’t a new phenomenon; fresh-faced lads with guitars and big haircuts have been making teenagers swoon since the Beatles, and they’ve come prepackaged since the Monkees. Since then the Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, Poison and many more have offered a pretty-boy alternative to rock’s down-and-dirty side, often offending rock purists but just as often serving as a gateway to grittier fare. Even today, we have bands like British pin-ups the 1975 sending young fans aflutter at Coachella, although in this climate they’re finally free to admit they’re more influenced by Whitney Houston than the Smiths. These bands are not pop-rock so much as pop dressed up as rock, teen idols wearing rock star costumes. That’s not a value judgment, just an anthropological observation. 5 Seconds Of Summer and their ancestors are a way for innocent listeners to get the illusion of danger while remaining safe from any real threat except the unshakable scent of hair product. They’ve always been a part of the pop music ecosystem, but over the past decade and a half there’s been an abundance of them popping up under the guise of pop-punk. How did we get from LFO to 5 Seconds Of Summer? It all starts with blink-182.

The same summer LFO was wooing Abercrombie girls, Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker were making pop-punk palatable for those same ladies. As it evolved from Buzzcocks to Descendents to NOFX, the genre had become predominantly the province of mischievous males — class clowns, skaters, prank-callers and the like. It was music to blast after leaving flaming bags of dog shit on your neighbor’s porch or to match with footage of rail slides and varial kickflips. Green Day and the Offspring took this sound to the preps and jocks, but blink-182 were the ones who opened the door to their cheerleader girlfriends. What began with the inclusion of “Dammit” on the Can’t Hardly Wait soundtrack in 1998 got going in earnest with 1999’s Enema Of The State, which smoothed pop-punk’s fury into warm tones just friendly enough to make the dick jokes seem cute rather than crass. It was truly an enema of the state of pop-punk. Blink bridged the TRL-era gap between knuckle-dragging nu-metal and immaculately styled pop idols. They polarized punk fans, but everybody in the mainstream could agree on them.

That made pop-punk and its weird cousin emo an exceptionally profitable venture. I was finishing up my freshman year of high school when Enema Of The State came out; by the time I graduated, pop-punks like Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba were becoming teen idols and teen idols like Avril Lavigne were dressing like pop-punks. Dashboard’s “Screaming Infidelities” and Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” were game-changers, especially “Sk8er Boi,” which cemented the concept of the punk rocker as a manchild worth squealing over. And let’s not underestimate the influence of Christian pop-punk acts like Relient K; youth group kids are always in search of sheepish music in wolf’s clothing. Together, these defanged hit-makers signified a new world order. Pop-punk was now the premier venue for rock ‘n’ roll teeny-boppers. It probably didn’t hurt that the previous wave of teen pop stars — your Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake types — was moving on to more grown-up material like “Toxic” and “Cry Me A River” by then.

What followed was what today’s emo revivalists refer to as pop-punk’s “hair metal” phase. The Warped Tour and Hot Topic became the breeding ground for scenecore, where even the most abrasive bands posted individual glamor shots on MySpace. Fall Out Boy rose from Chicago’s hardcore underground to become top 40 hitmakers as Pete Wentz hooked up with pop singer Ashlee Simpson. Something Corporate released a song called “Punk Rock Princess.” Shit, one band openly called itself Cute Is What We Aim For. Leading lights in that scene such as Fall Out Boy and Paramore progressively nudged their sounds closer to hip-hop, R&B, and electronic dance-pop. Meanwhile, the Disney Channel’s wholesome youth entertainment factory cranked out the Jonas Brothers, whose debut single, “Mandy,” could have passed for a preteen blink-182. By 2011, Hot Chelle Rae were dressing like Russell Brand caricatures and kicking out effervescent singles with only a token connection to rock ‘n’ roll. Which brings us to One Direction, the reigning boy band of our time, who recorded their own guitar-pop anthem last year, albeit one that resembles Big Star more than blink-182. 1D discovered 5 Seconds Of Summer and took them on tour last year, paving the way for the She Looks So Perfect EP to debut at #2 (behind only the ever-resilient Frozen soundtrack) on the US album chart.

5 Seconds Of Summer is maybe the exact center between Chris Carrabba and Avril Lavigne, the logical culmination of the pop-punk teeny bopper movement that sprung up in the wake of Enema Of The State. Take their instruments away and try to spot the difference between anything on their EP and 1D’s “Story Of My Life.” Alternately, let them keep the instruments but put the music on mute — can you tell them apart from half the groups on this year’s Warped Tour? By completing the circuit, singing about tattoos and “ripped skinny jeans” over pristine productions while flashing Hollywood smiles, they underline what a Tigerbeat operation post-blink-182 pop-punk has been all along. The clothes change, but the hormones stay the same.

HEY, CHECK OUT THIS EP

Last week we brought you “Sophie K” from Florida synth-pop act X priest X in the singles section. This week the group’s full Samurai EP is streaming, and it’s a gorgeously wispy bit of post-Chvrches power-pop.

CHART WATCH

The morning after I got back to Ohio from Coachella I awoke to find multiple inches of snow on the ground — halfway through April! The only reasonable explanation for this (besides Ohio’s unfortunate tendency to skip past temperate spring and fall weather and get right to the extreme temperatures) is the Frozen soundtrack’s continued domination of the Billboard 200. The album logged its tenth nonconsecutive week at #1 last week with 149,000 in sales, pushing its overall total above 2 million. Per Billboard, it’s only the eleventh album of the SoundScan era to pull off 10 weeks on top. Three other soundtracks are among those ranks: The Bodyguard, Titanic, and The Lion King.

The rest of the album chart is downright pathetic; Pharrell’s G I R L only had to sell 29,000 copies to finish #2, the lowest-selling #2 in SoundScan history. G I R L sold 353 percent less than Frozen; the last time there was such a disparity percentage-wise between the #1 and #2 albums was September 2007, when the High School Musical soundtrack sold 507 percent more than Talib Kweli’s Eardrum. 5 Seconds Of Summer’s She Looks So Perfect EP is at #3 with 26,000. Christian worship band MercyMe manages to debut at #4 with only about 26,000 as well, and on the other end of the spiritual spectrum, Black Label Society’s Catacombs Of The Black Vatican debuts at #5 just short of 26,000 in sales. R&B singer SoMo’s self-titled album debuts at #6 with 20,000 in sales, and country singer Martina McBride’s Everlasting debuts at #7 with a mere 21,000. These should not be top 10 numbers! Luke Bryan, Shakira, and Florida Georgia Line round out the top 10.

Hey, more stasis on the Hot 100 too! Billboard reports that the top 7 has been the same for three consecutive weeks for the first time in the chart’s 55-year history. That means Pharrell’s “Happy” is #1 again (for an eighth straight week), followed by John Legend, Katy Perry, Jason DeRulo, Idina Menzel, Bastille, and Lorde. It’s not like DJ Snake & Lil Jon, Aloe Blacc, and OneRepublic represent any kind of real movement either. The closest thing to a shakeup near the top of the charts is Ed Sheeran’s “Sing,” which debuts at #15. Is this stagnant field a result of the new chart rules, a natural effect of this niche-oriented generation, or what?

Interestingly, although the top 7 has never repeated exactly for three straight weeks, it did happen for just two weeks in 1982. Billboard listed those songs: Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”; John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good”; Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra”; Fleetwood Mac’s “Hold Me”; Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry”; Air Supply’s “Even the Nights Are Better”; and REO Speedwagon’s “Keep the Fire Burnin’.”

TRACK CITY

John Mayer – “XO” (Beyoncé Cover)
John Mayer’s breathy balladry is mostly tepid, but he tends to knock his covers out of the park (remember his “Kid A”?), and he’s applied those skills to a recent romantic Beyoncé hit. Thankfully, instead of joining the already crowded field of “Drunk In Love” covers, he opted to do justice to the very pretty “XO.” Or maybe you consider this a desecration of the original?

MNEK – “Every Little Word”
“Do you fuck to this shit?” Not yet, but I do fuck with it.

Wiz Khalifa – “We Dem Boyz”
Getting a distinct “Worst Behavior” vibe from this one, but with Wiz’s own special brand of insufferable charisma subbed in for Drake’s. Can imagine this coming on at barbecues all summer and not being mad.

Jhené Aiko – “Comfort Inn Ending”
Perhaps she indeed should not have fucked him on a boat for his birthday, but it certainly resulted in an enjoyable treatise on post-fling regret. Finally starting to understand what Drake sees in this lady.

SoMo – “Ride”
This one’s been out there for a few months now, but considering SoMo’s self-titled debut just landed in the (admittedly feeble) Billboard 200 top 10 and is the #1 album on iTunes right now, it probably merits some attention. Other than a few post-40 production floruishes, there’s not really anything zeitgeisty about it; “Ride” is the sort of back-to-basics sex-you-up slow jam that could’ve been on the charts any time in the past 30 years. I can’t imagine actively choosing to listen to it, but I wouldn’t turn it off if it came on the radio either.

Sigma – “Nobody To Love”
London duo Sigma sampled Charlie Wilson’s “Bound 2″ chorus and turned it into an uptempo dance-pop track with drum ‘n’ bass vibes. It’s now the #1 song in the UK. Proceed with caution.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Taylor Swift crashed a bridal shower in my very own hometown, then video-blogged about it. [Taylor Swift]

Who’s up for some new ABBA? The members of ABBA might be. [The Guardian]

One Direction fans under 12 — in all seriousness, surely one of the most fervent demographics in their fan base — might not be allowed into the standing general admission section of an upcoming Sunderland stadium show. [BBC]

Speaking of stadium shows, who’s on board for the rumored Jay Z/Beyoncé summer stadium tour? [The New York Post]

Not that he needs it, but Sean Combs is finally getting a college degree, albeit an honorary one. [Billboard]

Comments (20)

Not surprised that the billboard top ten is stagnant, I currently work in the pizza delivery business and the CD player in my car broke leaving me with just the radio to listen to, and stagnant would be a very appropriate word to describe the music I have been forced to endure as of late. I live in Alaska and we have about six radio stations to choose from (excluding country, classical and talk,) and once to my dismay Dark Horse by Katy Perry was playing on four of them at once! I don’t mind pop music but the recent string of could be summer jams from the likes of Pharrel, Avici, Calvin Harris, Elle Goulding, Katy Perry, etc, have been incredibly underwhelming (Calvin Harris’ latest single is literally called “Summer”! C’mon,) and a lot of them sound formulaic and boring. Hopefully with summer almost upon us we’ll start hearing some better stuff, or maybe I can just upgrade my car stereo.

SoMo is from Denton, Texas where I go to college. I was in a school organization that actually had him come perform for an event of ours back in 2011. He did it for free and he was just playing covers of pop and R&B songs. Crazy to hear him on the radio and see him performing on TV now.

And I have to say with that Sigma video, its weird seeing British girls wearing dream catchers and other Native American inspired stuff. Its weird cultural appropriation when we do it in America but I feel like its really weird when British people or other Europeans do it.

We honestly don’t need to be discussing shit like 5 Seconds of Summer on this site. I understand “poptimism” has become increasingly relevant in recent years and more important to driving content revenue, and the blurring between mainstream and indie is real, but honestly — What the fuck happened to this site?

It’s hit me that it’s not Coachella, SXSW, etc. which have changed for the worse, but rather music in general. The pop machine has infiltrated what used to be indie music publications with higher filters, and now we’re staring hard into the reality that all of the progress independent music made in the Aughts is going to be undone because we’re all of a sudden glorifying (or at least thinking too hard about) empty pop music like it’s something more than it should be.

“5 Seconds Of Summer and their ancestors are a way for innocent listeners to get the illusion of danger while remaining safe from any real threat except the unshakable scent of hair product.”

” By completing the circuit, singing about tattoos and “ripped skinny jeans” over pristine productions while flashing Hollywood smiles, they underline what a Tigerbeat operation post-blink-182 pop-punk has been all along. The clothes change, but the hormones stay the same.”

I think they’re pretty aware of how empty it is. This is a high quality, interesting article about a clear phenomenon in music. Chris isn’t singing their praises, he’s just being a music journalist.

I get that, but to me, this is a perfectly good waste of time and content that could be used to talk about an underground artist who could use the press. As the saying goes, “no press is bad press,” and even just by recognizing that this group exists gives them a victory of some sorts, so let’s just ignore it and hope it goes away. Jeez, it’s like every form of pop music needs to be turned into a science or thesis statement as if it’s some human psychology experiment…

To echo eighteenk’s sentiment, this article is far from praise of 5 Seconds of Summer or pop music.
I think Chris already made the argument to why a weekly pop based article is useful in a previous post so I won’t bother with that, but this article in specific is actually pretty useful in furthering readers’ knowledge of independent music.

The progression of music pop culture that Chris laid out was very insightful and interesting and actually made me want to do some digging of my own. He gave the Buzzcocks as example of a distant ancestor of Blink 182 with only 2 example steps between, but I wanted to try to connect all of the dots. I figured I would start with The Rolling Stones and The Kinks leading into Iggy and the Stooges and MC5 and then to Blondie (side note: I love Blondie) and to bands we consider more standard punk like Black Flag and Dead Kennedys and so on. On my way I discovered some bands that I really like that I never would have found otherwise.

I also considered what some of these older bands would sound like if they were starting fresh today, so I searched for some strict disciples of these bands’ music, and it’s led me to some great independent bands. I actually even ordered a album from a small band, Unwelcome Guest, and plan on checking out their label when I get the time.

All this because of an article about pop music. These types of pieces aren’t undoing the progress of independent music; they simply give an intelligent view of other areas of music through the lens of an independent music fan, and more often than not they verify our belief that pop music kinda sucks and Blondie is the shit.

I’m not getting all the down votes to your comment this time, Michael_. I’m pretty much with you, although I’ll always prefer Stereogum over that other site, because at least here we can come down to the comments to vent. Pitchfork put up an article about pop music today that hit all the talking points that are currently in fashion on the subject (i.e. there is no real distinction between pop music and everything else, people who like “serious” music are uptight and inauthentic, Katy Perry is just so much fun!, etc.), and my biggest problem with the article isn’t what it says, but that (as always) it comes down from on high and sits on the Internet like an unapproachable monolith. There’s no way to interact with Pitchfork and that feels so weird in 2104. I mean, after reading this Pitchfork article, I thought to myself, “I need to get over to Stereogum to say something about this.” How bizarre is that? Stereogum is like a conversation you can get in on. Pitchfork is like listening to strangers talking at the next table.

How dare you compare this crap with Blink 182, at least they were a credible and respectable punk band back in the day with cool funny videos, awesome songs, they had all kinds of fans not just only 13yo beliebers, they weren’t prefabricated, they didn’t sound computer made and lifeless, they were raw and over all……they weren’t forgettable crap like this guys are, and are still loved and remembered today.
Go try to put some 5 seconds of summer on a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game OST and come back, or an American Pie movie.

Most Viewed

Last spring the world got a brief preview of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, the secret Wu-Tang Clan album that will be released in a limited edition of 1 and auctioned off to the highest bidder. That might be all most of us hear from the project for the rest of our… More »

Kanye West debuted his much-leaked single "All Day" at the Brit Awards last week, and now a studio version has emerged. The So Help Me God song's bouncy, bass-heavy beat also features verses from Allan Kingdom and Theophilus London, and a massive "Monster"/"Black Skinhead"-style riff slices through the track from time… More »

Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" was one of the defining jams of summer 2012, but it was the sort of song that screamed "one-hit wonder" from the rooftops. Well, that's not going to be the case. Today, Jepsen comes back with a new single called "I Really Like You," and it is absolute top-shelf… More »

Die Antwoord seemed to be on the verge of climbing to a new tier of celebrity this year with Ninja and Yolandi Visser playing prominent roles in the dystopian sci-fi twee oddity Chappie. Now they'll definitely be more famous, but not for the right reasons; notorious might be a better word for it. Drake and… More »

Mumford & Sons have announced the details of their third full-length, Wilder Mind, and it's bound to sound pretty different from the rest of the folk-rock group's output. As As they told Rolling Stone, the band went completely electric for the new album, ditching the folkier elements that catapulted them to fame. "We felt… More »